A recent piece from the Brookings Institution detailed the competitive risks of forced data disclosure in the Google Search case. The DOJ continually pushed remedies that would compel Google to hand over users’ search data to its rivals, and Brookings warned this could reduce innovation by devaluing Google’s investments in their products and lower incentives to invest further by giving competitors an unearned advantage. Instead of leveling the playing field, the proposal could distort fair competition and entrench weaker firms, ultimately harming consumers and putting their data privacy at risk.

Extreme Data Disclosures Harm Consumers

Competition policy should protect consumers, not harm them. DOJ’s remedies leave consumers out of the equation. The article noted that,

— “[Google users] have not necessarily signed up as customers of these AI companies and might have no business relationship at all with them. Allowing personalized data of Google users to flow unhindered to all Google’s rivals would make these challenging AI privacy issues even more challenging.”

— Brookings added that ending personalized search “simply degrades the range and quality of the search services available to Google users […] It is an odd antitrust remedy that would encourage competition by diminishing the perceived quality of the monopoly service.”

— Furthermore, the remedies “indeed might make people flee the Google search service, not because of a better alternative, but because of government-sanctioned privacy invasions that they are powerless to resist once they use the Google search engine.”

A Privacy Risk Multiplied in the Age of Personalized AI

As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, user privacy is more important than ever. Brookings warned that the DOJ’s current proposal lacks sufficient protections and fails to prevent the reidentification of supposedly deidentified data. This exposes consumers to the risk that their search histories could be exploited by companies they never chose to trust.

— Brookings argued that “a requirement for regular privacy audits sounds reassuring, but it is an empty gesture unless the underlying privacy obligations are robust, something lacking in their current form.”

— “The apparently deliberate exclusion of privacy expertise from the technical committee is therefore puzzling and completely unexplained,” they added.

— The article concluded that: “More needs to be done. The new chatbot and AI agent services are a privacy nightmare for many. The DOJ might make the problem substantially worse by allowing Google user search data to flow to frontier AI labs, be transformed into personally identifiable form, and inserted on a real-time basis into the profiles these AI companies are constructing to provide personalized AI services to their users.”

The analysis makes clear that the DOJ’s approach to data disclosures risks distorting competition, weakening innovation, and exposing consumers to unnecessary harm. With personalized AI becoming common, the court should ensure users are protected in their online activity.

— As the piece warns, “the DOJ’s proposed privacy protections are woefully lacking. They must be expanded to include additional requirements for reasonable deidentification, a ban on attempted reidentification, and the inclusion of a privacy expert in the technical committee administering the antitrust remedies.”

Read more about the harms of forced data disclosure here, here, and here.